Jan Zilinsky is a political scientist and was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the Technical University of Munich in Germany and a researcher at the NYU Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics in the United States. He has now joined the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication (JMG) as an associate senior lecturer. The recruitment was made possible through a Swedish Research Council initiative aimed at strengthening Swedish higher education institutions’ ability to recruit outstanding early-career researchers.
“We are extremely happy that Jan has joined our department! He is one of the leading scholars of his generation and brings with him both theoretical and methodological expertise that will significantly strengthen our research and teaching. We are also very happy that he will help make AI and political communication – an important and rapidly evolving field – a significant part of our research profile,” says Jesper Strömbäck, professor of journalism and political communication.
Jan Zilinsky is happy to be in Gothenburg
“As someone who has studied the political consequences of distrust, I am thrilled to be in Sweden, a place where my prior research is, thankfully, not fully applicable. I look forward to getting to know the city and learning from my colleagues. Later, I hope to challenge my future students and give them the confidence to be independent thinkers and curious citizens,” says Jan Zilinsky.
In his research, he is interested in how people and political elites use technology. One of the areas he studies is how people perceive AI-generated political content. He also studies social media and political behavior, as well as a range of issues related to digital political communication.
What do you see as the most important questions to understand when it comes to AI’s impact on politics?
“The question of who controls the flow of information has long interested social scientists. Today, part of the answer is whatever a chatbot says when a citizen asks it a question. But is ChatGPT akin to a newspaper, a search engine, or a well-informed neighbor who never disagrees with you? And to what extent do AI systems reflect the opinions of the people who created them?”
Understanding human psychology is important
Another question that interests Jan Zilinsky is what happens to user autonomy when AI begins to provide people with political information and advice.
“My understanding is that people in Sweden use election compasses for voting advice, and a large language model can provide political information or advice too. But voting advice applications ask about your views before suggesting a party – what if a chatbot skips that step and assumes that it knows you? If you haven’t explicitly shared your political opinions with your AI assistant, what kind of political advice should we expect?”
Jan Zilinsky is also interested in exploring how AI may affect our digital information environments. Social media is not an ideal source of information, he notes, yet digital platforms with social media features remain popular communication channels. One question he wants to explore is what happens if these platforms become flooded with AI-generated content.
“If this makes people more skeptical, might it, paradoxically, make us more discerning and less likely to fall for disinformation? While I hope to study these technological changes with my colleagues, I keep reminding myself how important it is to take human psychology seriously too and not to be seduced by narratives of technological determinism.”
Even after Jan Zilinsky closes his laptop for the day, his mind often keeps turning over research questions. But he agrees that occasional days off are important.
“I like to take my wife on a road trip, listen to our daughter joyfully speak different languages, or spend an evening with an epistolary novel. I also watch some TV shows on Netflix and Apple TV, but it’s driving me a bit crazy that the waiting times between seasons are now so long. I’m currently growing old while waiting for the next season of Pluribus,” says Jan Zilinsky.
